October 20, 2017 2:22pm EDTOctober 20, 2017 2:22pm EDTThis is a move that reeks of desperation, greed, stubbornness, pettiness or some foul mixture of all of the above. It is a move that the Nationals may come to regret.Dusty Baker(Getty Images)

Much of what transpires in the dugout and in the clubhouse of a big league baseball team remains a mystery to the world at large. We do, however, know that the most important job of a manager is to keep his clubhouse in order, to manage all of the titanically large egos orbiting each other in close proximity for nearly nine months of the year.

In-game tactical decisions can be chewed up and spit out over and over again, but it means little if the players are at each other’s throats.

This was quite literally the case with the Nationals under the Matt Williams administration. The 2015 Nationals saw their disappointing season come to an end just after Jonathan Papelbon choked Bryce Harper in the dugout, the product of frustrations boiling over in broad daylight. Williams had lost his clubhouse long before the incident, and he was unceremoniously shown the door shortly thereafter.

Dusty Baker was brought in to right the ship, and he did just that. So we're left to wonder why the Nationals announced Friday that Baker will not be back for the 2018 season.

By all accounts, Baker was beloved by his team. Williams left a burning tire fire in the Washington clubhouse, and Baker quickly set things right. Long regarded as one of the finest leaders in the game, Baker’s perceived tactical shortcomings didn’t seem to impede him from winning 192 games in two years. He was surely blessed with an impressive roster, but that same group had so quickly unwound in less capable hands.

Just this year Baker won 97 games. The competition within the division was weak, but Baker also had to contend with losing Adam Eaton almost immediately out of the gate, a Harper knee injury down the stretch, a starting catcher who provided almost nothing beyond his ability to manage the staff, a rotating cast of Triple-A center and left fielders, a bullpen that didn’t find two reliable back-end arms until July, and 13 starts from Edwin Jackson.

Such circumstances have felled better teams. The Nationals may have won the division with a lesser manager, but would they have won 97 games? We’ll never know.

Baker’s Nationals never advanced past the first round, as has been the case with every manager who’s brought the Nats to the postseason. That was the main reason GM Mike Rizzo gave for the new managerial search. The Nationals have repeatedly won the division, and at some point they need to seal the deal. There’s only one guaranteed year of the Bryce Harper Nats left before Harper wanders into free agency, and there’s no indication that he’s definitely coming back. They’ll never have a better chance to win than they will with one of the five best position players in the game on their roster.

This excuse would make sense if it wasn’t so utterly asinine.

By this logic, Baker would still have a job if the Nationals had beaten the Cubs last week. The difference between winning and losing that game is essentially one Max Scherzer implosion. Baker did the right thing by bringing in his best pitcher. He did not cause Scherzer to be wild and look all too human at the worst possible moment. Certain decisions by Baker could certainly be quibbled with (batting Jayson Werth second, instead of MVP candidate Anthony Rendon, for instance), but Scherzer’s meltdown was the difference.

Baker did not cause that inning to go haywire, and one arbitrary game being the difference between one of the most highly-regarded managers ever coming back or not is almost insulting to the intelligence of Nationals fans.

The Washington Post confirmed earlier this month that Rizzo wanted to work out an extension for Baker in the spring, and that ownership did not. When asked Friday whether he would have preferred that Baker returned, Rizzo deflected the question. It seems quite clear that this decision came from ownership — the Lerners — not Rizzo.

The Lerners were the ones who offered Bud Black a contract far below market average and had to turn to Baker as a backup plan as a result, and the ones who reportedly paid Baker less than half what he made as manager of the Reds. Baker was almost surely deserving of a raise had he come back, both because of his status as a prestigious manager and because he guided Washington to two NL East titles.

It remains to be seen what the Nationals will pay their sixth manager in 10 years, but given the industry’s new inclination toward younger and more untested managers, it likely won’t be an overwhelming amount. The Lerners did, however, come up with $21 million for Wieters, who was by all major measurements below replacement level this year, to be the starting catcher after the team had already traded for Derek Norris to fill that role.

There can be no doubting Baker’s acumen for the game. His teams have won wherever he’s gone, and his players have almost all sung his praises. He is witty and gregarious with the media. His reputation for leaving pitchers in too long to the detriment of their health, whether deserved or not, has almost now been replaced by a reputation for having too quick a hook. His lack of a postseason win with Washington is partially his fault, but managers cannot simply will their teams to wins. The players play the game, and Baker’s players have not delivered.

Baker was not the one who compiled Washington’s notoriously rickety bullpens, and not the one who was swinging the bats and throwing the pitches. The dice fall where they do in the playoffs, and it’s not Baker who’s at fault for that.

It’s also worth noting that there is now just one black manager in all of Major League Baseball, and none of the major candidates who have reportedly interviewed for managerial jobs this month are black. Baker is an important figure in that regard, a titan of baseball who has always gotten a bad rap. There are still some openings, and Baker may yet be quickly snatched up to fill one of them. It remains to be seen if he will continue to have to meet unrealistically high standards in that job too.

Whoever is next to manage the Nationals will not have as tough a situation to dive into as Baker did. The team won’t be ripping itself apart. The new manager will, however, have the pressure of immediately needing to deliver a playoff series win, and a World Series win with Harper before he is signed away by someone else. He may have to do it without the highly regarded presence of Werth serving as his traffic cop in the clubhouse, if Werth is not re-signed, and it was reportedly Werth who helped reign in Harper.

Simply put, the Nationals look foolish for disposing of Baker, and in doing it in this fashion. There’s no doubt that Washington badly wants to win a title. The front office simply seems to have no idea how to go about doing that, and can’t stop tripping over itself along the way.

The next Washington manager could turn out to be a brilliant hire, a good shepherd both on the field and in the clubhouse. What are the odds that he will be better than Dusty Baker? They aren’t very high at all. There is no good reason for Baker to be shoved out the door, and no good reason for it to be done through a Friday news dump.

This is a move that reeks of desperation, greed, stubbornness, pettiness or some foul mixture of all of the above. It's one the Nationals may come to regret.